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r2k writes "Apple's iTunes Plus files are DRM-free, but sharing the files on P2P networks may be an extremely bad idea. A report published by CNet highlights the fact that the account information and email address of the iTunes account holder is hidden inside each and every DRM-free download. I checked, and I found I couldn't access the information using an ID3 tag editor, but using Notepad I found my email address stored inside the audio file itself."

I don't see the problem. I didn't want them to remove DRM so I could ignore the copyright on the music, I wanted them to remove it so I could use it on any device I wanted to listen to it on. They did that; now I can, as far as I'm concerned, we're all good now.

If you interpret the lack of DRM as permission to ignore copyright, and you end up in trouble because you did so...

Nope, don't see the problem.

....sharing the files on P2P networks may be an extremely bad idea

Good grief. "Sharing" copyrighted music files on a P2P network was always an extremely bad idea. If you ever had any fraction of an excuse for doing it (and frankly, I don't really think you did, but...) it is gone now, at least as far as iTunes purchases go. What has changed is it is now reasonable to purchase music, because you'll actually get to own it, use it on *all* your gear, back it up, etc.

The only thing I can think of that is really affected by this is your ability to legitimately resell recording of a tune you own, because you bought it. And for that issue, I give it.... maybe an hour before someone comes up with a tool to ZOT that name and email address right out of there. Maybe it'll even put the new one in. Pride of ownership and all that.

It's clear. A certain percentage of slashdotters act all surprised every time it's repeated though. Of course, most/.'ers also act all surprised every time some wack-job blames video games for violence too. At least some people are pointing out that the account information has been part of iTunes files for forever and isn't news to most people who know how to do a Google search.

"no you won't. if they did offer that, then you'd come up with another reason why not to buy it. stop lying and just say you don't like paying for music. it's ok."

Nope, that's my last complaint that I can think of...promise.

No, I buy my music....on CD, or SACD. I use that to listen to on my good home sound system...I rip it to lesser formats for lower quality listening conditions, like the gym or the car. I own pretty much all the music I grew up with, and many of them were album oriented, and the whole

...why does everyone get up in arms when just trying to want to buy online what we have bought for YEARS on a CD....

If you are male and of an age where you can afford equipment like that, I suspect that your ears may not be as golden as they used to be when you were poorer, but young, agile and strong and your hearing extended to 20,000Hz.

Most music on CD's even, is unnaturally processed, such as compression to make it sound louder. Often, also equalization is also added which distorts the original performa

iTunes doesn't sell MP3s, though. They sell lossy AAC files in an MP4 container. So it's unlikely that they'd have ID3 frames in the first place.

I haven't purchased any DRM-free songs from iTunes, but I'd suspect that the information is stored as standard MP4 atoms, and that the iTunes editing interface just doesn't give you the ability to modify them. In which case you could presumably use a standard MP4 tool to remove the information, if you were so inclined.

Sure, so long as they make it abundantly clear that this is what they're up to.

Choose any iTunes plus song, and select "get info" from the main menu. On the left side of the "Summary" pane, you'll see "Purchased By", "Account Name", and "Purchase Date". IIRC, those were there on the DRM versions too.

I seem to recall a recent change in terms of service. My guess is that if you actually read the whole thing, it would have told you that personal info is attached to files you download.

I'm betting 99.9999% of the folks just clicked accept without reading the new terms.

My only gripe on these sorts of changes in terms of service is that I think they should highlight what has recently changed.

This has always been the case since the iTunes store opened! It's not news, it's several years old. Heck, when Hymn was available (removed FairPlay from purchased music, and this was 5+ years ago), it kept the personal information to prevent people from P2P'ing the newly unlocked music.

So the very first time you used the iTunes store years ago, personal information was attached - it wouldn't have shown up with change bars because that part has not changed. You can probably find the news articles about it from years ago, and again from a couple of years ago when iTunesPlus was started about how the AppleID of the purchaser was embedded in the file.

People are acting like this is completely new, when it's been happening for years now.

Seriously, am I the only person in the entire world who runs strings or emacs on binary files just to see what might be in them?

Yes. Yes you are.

No, he (she) isn't. The first thing I did after reading the summary was to pick up my Mac Powerbook, cd into my Music/Itunes directory, find a couple of.m4p files, and run the strings command on them. Adding a few greps to filter out the printable binary junk, I quickly found my name and email address.

As for someone writing a tool to replace them, I found that I already had one. Years ago, I wrote a little command-line app that just does a simple string substitution and writes the result to stdout. It's quite handy, and I use it all the time. I told it to copy one of the.m4p files, with my email address replaced by a fake email address of the same length. I then told iTunes to load that file - and it played fine.

Then, of course, I did the same trick, replacing my name with a different name of the same length. As I expected, iTunes popped up a little window saying that it needed to check the tune's registration, showing me the name, and asking for a password. Presumably when DRM goes away, that little window will also go away, and I'll bet that the tunes will play.

I don't think I'll bother posting the program. Any semi-competent beginning C programmer should be able to type it in under a minute. Probably most perl and python programmers can do the same, a bit faster, as could any moderately experienced emacs user. 25 years ago, when I first picked up the C bible, I wouldn't have found it a challenge after my second day with the language.

Just make sure the replacement strings have the same byte count as the old name.

I don't think you really addressed the compromise or reasonableness aspect of this.

Apple wants DRM free stuff and RIAA doesn't. Apple stuffs personal info in there so there will be some accountability should the file get P2P'd. Sounds like compromise to me.

As far as reasonableness? Your scenarios sound pretty darn unlikely. Almost as unlikely as someone stealing my iPod with my contact info in it, then deliberately leaving it at the scene of a murder in order to frame me. Or maybe space aliens will steal the music on my iPod and accidentally broadcast it back to Earth. NASA will pick it up, magically determine the email address associated with it, send spooks to pick me and perform experiments on me for the rest of my life.

You know, you're going to give yourself a heart attack far too early if you worry about crap like this. Seriously, an email address is not a piece of personal information that you can hold close to your chest.

I fail to see the issue, again. So do you ever email anyone? I mean, anyone you send an email to could potentially log into your iTunes account and buy all sorts of tracks with your account. Maybe even a movie or a whole album.

1) Apple doesnegotiate with the RIAA [slashdot.org] about the terms of the DRM service [slashdot.org] that Apple has to maintain and run. I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but there have been stories over the years going off on how the DRM wasn't Apple's idea and so forth. There are even quotes of Steve Jobs saying that DRM is bad [apple.com], and that guy sure as hell isn't the type to just take it. I seem to remember a Slashdot story telling of how they were forcing the RIAA to accept their terms, but over the years the opposite [slashdot.org] I admit has been more likely.

Of course, the actual music execs have been saying [slashdot.org] for years that DRM is bad [slashdot.org] but the lawyers at the RIAA seem to be running their companies into the ground for them.

2)The private info consists of the email address related to the account that purchased it. I do not believe it actually contains a lot of 'personal information' such as your name, or social security number, or bank account numbers. I don't personally buy DRM'd music (which means I've yet to buy an iTunes track) so I can't be 100% positive, but I'm fairly sure there would of been an article on Slashdot before given this is nothing new to iTunes.

By the way, how is it any different than leaving a card or sticker with your name and phone number on an item in case you lose it so a good Samaritan (in the unlikely event your stuff is found by one) can return it to you? Honestly I think this is a non-argument.

3)You're the kind of person that would put a kid in a bubble to keep him from getting hurt, but not thing of how to feed him aren't you? The 'private info' consists of an e-mail address. Your pedophile argument is no better than the morons who scream "think of the children" in politics, equally pointless and used as an exaggeration of a problem to prove your point.

A pedophile isn't going to go track down someone by their bloody email address when they can just watch the school and pick their target in person. They wouldn't even know its a kids iPod until they found out who owned the email address, it could be a teacher's. Never mind the difficulties in actually associating a face to an email address when all you have to go by is the address itself and the fact they have an iPod.

The scams are equally as bad. Worst case, you have someone use the email address on a few porn sites so they get some XXX spam mail. If you are a mature parent, you can deal with that easy enough and if you are a tech savvy parent it shouldn't be a problem anyways unless you don't supervise your kids online experience (which means ALL online aspects, not just browsing and IRC).

So tell me. What would you do with my email address? How will you track me down with mine if I don't use it on Myspace? What if its only used on iTunes?

I think the concern is the following scenario: 1. Download from iTunes onto an iPod, 2. The iPod is stolen, 3. The tunes on the iPod are uploaded to file sharing networks, 4. I get sued by the RIAA. Of course, I think the CYA thing to do is just make sure you file a report whenever your iPod is stolen, and that should make short work of any lawsuit defense.

This sort of thing has been a risk for a while. For instance, your car might be stolen, then used as a getaway car for an armed bank robbery. Witnesses make note of the license plate, and the police come to your door.

You normally will report the given vehicle stolen or what not, and that likewise will give you the out. The local PD will give a rats ass if you lost your $100 IPod, I'm sure they will either hangup on you out right, or follow up with "What do you want us to about it?" - I wouldn't be surprised if they would feel the same about the $100 toy being supposedly stolen either.

Now that the RIAA/Apple has allowed this to happen, they need to also setup some kind of system where you can report a loss and or theft o

"3) Imagine how many iPods are lost at schools. How many scams can you think of that take advantage of the owner's desire to get their iPod back. Worst of all, show me a pedophile that wouldn't love to pretend to be some kid's classmate wanting to return their beloved iPod in order to lure them somewhere private. Lost iPod + email address of owner = "Meet me by the white van with tinted windows""

Yes, won't somebody please think of the children?

Pirates: "No good music is available onine! I'll stop pirating when the record labels wake up and embrace online distribution."

Record industry: "Okay, our entire catalogs are online now."

Pirates: "But now it's too expensive! Good god, do you think we're rich? I'll stop pirating when music is less than a buck a track. That's a fortune!"

Record industry: "Okay, you win. Now by shopping around, you can find lots of music for $0.80 a track or less."

Pirates: "But you still have that DRM which impedes my fair use rights! I'll stop pirating when DRM is dead. Until then, it's off to TPB for me."

Record industry: "Hey, you know, you were right all along. It took us a while to realize it, but you're right. We've removed the DRM."

Pirates: "PEDOPHILES! PEDOPHILES! YOU'RE ENCOURAGING AND ASSISTING THE KIDNAPPING OF CHILDREN! Because of this despicable act, I'm going to pirate TWICE as much music now!"

i seriously doubt that an email which can be easily changed in a file can be used as the sole grounds for pressing charges. It ma however bolster a case where a user has been tracked by IP and the files have his email too.

i seriously doubt that an email which can be easily changed in a file can be used as the sole grounds for pressing charges. It ma however bolster a case where a user has been tracked by IP and the files have his email too.

As we're talking about purchased music, all Apple would have to do is lookup the record of the credit card used to purchase the song.

Why would you think that you would get fined just because your name is in something?

Nothing is going to happen until it goes to court. The guberment can't give you a fine for this like a speeding ticket or anything. They would have to collect enough evidence and present it and then either hope that the government picks it up or sue you directly. Even then, your lawyer will probably get you off before it costs any money because you won't be the first person it happened to. All it will take is one Virus going

It's not a nefarious move. It's how iTunes (and therefore Apple) recognize purchased music. This is necessary for a number of benevolent reasons, including a strong layer of insurance against selling you the same track twice.

If you really don't like it, write the two-liner (one line if you know sed and awk) that blows your personal info out of every purchased track automatically.

Person A is the targetPerson B is the attackerRIAA is the litigious groups of assholes

Person B decides to harm Person A. Person B knows Person A's email address. Person B modifies a bunch of MP3s to contain Person A's email address and then posts them to every torrent site imaginable. RIAA is famous for ignoring what "reasonable doubt" might suggest or imply and immediate goes into litigation. Even if it is later revealed that Person A was a victim in this scenario and is completely innocent of wrong doing, Person A just spend a LOT of money in the process. (It can be reasonably assumed that Person A spent a lot of money because without having spent money, a defendant most likely will lose.)

Suppose I hated you. I see you have a link to your homepage-- many users do. That page, being an expression of personal taste, might have information about music you like. Yours does. Now, yours is a "CD collection", but it could just as easily be a list of songs you bought of iTunes (as many other users do, in a list, in their blog, etc). So I pick something from your list, say A Perfect Circle - Emotive (good choice, BTW). Google tells me your real name is Zach Robinson. One of your email addresses is zachd at microsoft dot com (obfuscated for your benefit). So I whip up a batch of itunes encoded A Perfect Circle with your name and mail address in it. I throw them on all the P2P sites I can find, wait a couple weeks, then drop a dime to the RIAA. It's trivial moments of effort for me.

Now you have copyrighted music with a label that says "owned by Zach Robinson" floating around, and a group of lawyers looking to extort a couple grand out of you. Sure you could make up a fake name and a fake email address that you use exclusively for purchasing from iTunes-- but why should the onus of not being sued be on you? Or, why couldn't Apple instead have taken a secret internal customer id number, hashed it using the date/time of purchase as a salt, run it through a secret algorithm, and slapped that into the "owned by" field so that I couldn't reproduce it? (Until their method is cracked and we're back to square one, that is)

Really, it all comes down to normalization. What describes a song? The artist, the album, the year of release, the genre-- all that fun stuff. Does YOUR name and email address describe the song? No. Then it doesn't belong in a song file. It belongs in your iTunes account, along with a list of songs you "own".

So it only serves to harm the innocent, is a poor method of tracking ownership, and introduces unrelated data to a set. There is NO reason for it to be there.

Right, we both saw those possibilities. And then I point out that there's no record of me purchasing those tracks and it's kind of game over and I'm sad that that's an effective use of your time.

As long as there's an actual correlation between those embedded email addresses and the purchase logs at Apple, it should be child's play to disprove "plants" like that.

Granted you have a window of malice here, but I believe it's a lot smaller than is being suggested. Those plants could be checked by Apple without me ever having to know. Your narrow window of malice (hoping to hit a subset and NOT a superset of whatI've purchased) would be even further mitigated by them simply setting "Bar For Kicking In Your Door" to some non-tiny number. So you don't even necessarily get to waste my time. Just your own.;)

You might with your project succeed with redistributing music files around the net... but that's kind of where things are now.

I've mentioned it elsewhere but songs are also encoded with the purchase timestamp. So if you've no access to someone's files then you've essentially zero chance of getting the purchase timestamp right, even if you get the songs they own right.

2. This levy does not allow you to distribute your collection online. Distributing copyrighted works online is still infringing activity.

3. The levy *does* cover you borrowing a CD from the library and making a *personal* copy of it to blank media. But, if you are recording the copyrighted work to a media that the levy is not applied to, it is still infringing activity.

Exactly. My first thought on reading this was "sweet, somebody's finally gone about it the sensible way".

I mean seriously, I've been waiting for somebody to implement this for nearly 10 years now. It's an obvious way to combat piracy since you can identify the source of the leak, and it's a massive benefit that digital distribution offers the record labels. Users get cheaper tracks and can download them instantly from the comfort of their own home. Record labels get to discourage piracy and have an easy way to track down the source when it happens.

Honestly, it's such a simple solution I thought there must have been something I was missing for the record companies to not implement this. It's win win as far as I can see.

How is a digital signature verifying that the file is the original provided by Apple iTunes DRM in any meaningful sense? It places no restrictions on the file in any form, doesn't prevent or limit it's usage, simply acts as verification: "My checksum matches the checksum that this signature says it should, therefore the file has not been changed since purchased from iTunes".

Which is exactly what the GP seems to have been going for. If they find a pirated track, it has your email address in it, and the signature validates (the file is unmodified), they can delete your account or whatever without having to worry about impersonation.

There is certainly more than one place where the owner's info is inserted: once in plain text, once watermarked through the music stream, once using steganography inside the music stream, once encrypted in precise spot that in itself gives info about the source, etc... And only Apple and selected **AA will know about those. Still, it's a progress.

If it was your own music, you obviously have (or had) a non-watermarked (for lack of a better term at the moment) version of the file. If it has permissive copying, surely you can find it somewhere other than iTunes?

True. I would imagine there are ways, though, of minimizing the loss going from AAC to MP3. A naive conversion would convert AAC back to uncompressed PCM samples, and then run that through a standard MP3 converter. That strategy would work (and is likely the one employed), but it seems like it would cause the maximum damage.

Another technique transcodes one format to the other. AAC is also a lossy format, and its psychoacoustic model has already decided to discard some information. Transcoding from AAC

Ripping from an original source to a lossy format is noticeable only to the most trained ears. Converting from one lossy format to another starts producing artifacts that the average user can hear on run of the mill equipment.

AAC will play on most portable devices these days. If you have something specific you want to play it on that can't handle an AAC, I'd make an mp3 copy just for that device, and keep the higher quality version for your computer and other devices.

Listening to music on headphones while on the train is lossy but people still do it. We can't all sit in silent rooms with reference quality speakers 6 ft in front of us and £1000 amplifiers. The quality loss is totally irrelevant as it cannot be heard under normal listening conditions by the vast majority of people.

Of course there's loss, but to imply a lack of transcoding loss is a prerequisite before anyone can use it anywhere is absolute madness.

No one who lives outside of their mum's basement cares. Really. Your average MP3 player is not hifi, and your average consumer doesn't give two shits about the quality loss.

Also, last I checked, Steve Jobs didn't repeatedly smash your face into a MacBook keyboard whilst pointing a shotgun at your head with his free hand until you bought music from iTunes. If you don't want it, don't buy it.

Also, last I checked, Steve Jobs didn't repeatedly smash your face into a MacBook keyboard whilst pointing a shotgun at your head with his free hand until you bought music from iTunes. If you don't want it, don't buy it.

Actually, Steve Jobs did repeatedly smash my face into a MacBook keyboard whilst pointing a shotgun at my head with his free hand until I bought music from iTunes, you insensitive clod.

The average person does not have aspergers syndrome, unlike the average slashdotter, and thus isn't anal about SNR ratios, codecs, et al. As long as they can screech along to Britney's latest banshee wailing, they're happy - they just don't care about audio quality.

Fair enough so long as there is no additional lossiness in the conversion.

Why? Who cares? AAC is a valid format. They should use MP3 because more non-iPods support MP3 then AAC? Maybe they should support Ogg because it's "better" or sell music in a lossless format so that you are closer to the original.

I kind of understood the complaint when it was DRM protected AAC "wahhh... I can't play it on my non-iPod even though that device supports AAC". Now you can. But there's no reason Apple should have to support MP3. To many, these high bitrate AAC files are superior to MP3. Have a non-AAC compatible player? Go to Amazon.com, they have a similar selection.

There will always be a complainer until Apple releases every song ever, including bootlegs, in Ogg, MP3, AAC, Flac, and ten other formats, and change the iPod to support all of the same, and make the iPod a 3G wireless device that has a built in BitTorrent client to grab the files quicker, and they cook you dinner and do your laundry too. Maybe some of the readers here just aren't the iPod's intended audience?

AAC in a a run-of-the-mill MPEG-4 container, with ID3-formatted tags stored in a separate atom (permissible in the MPEG-4 standard).

Anything that uses libavcodec/libavformat as a base (ffmpeg, VLC, mplayer, etc) can read these files. They may not have the code to extract the ID3 tags from the atom and feed the data blob to something like libid3... but as long as the player software can read standard MPEG-4 files with basic AAC... it can play these suckers.

The format just isn't as prevalent as MP3, but that doesn't automatically make it proprietary.

Like many places, Spanish law has exemptions for private use, which probably makes removing DRM completely legal. However the owners are allowed to make copies only for private usage, with collective and lucrative uses not allowed. Sharing on P2P would definitely constitute a collective use.

"The owners are allowed to make copies only for private usage, with collective and lucrative uses not allowed."

It would be more correct to say that collective use is technically illegal, because it's most definitely allowed. A Spanish legal precedent was established for this at the end of 1996 by a judgement that exonerated an accused Internet file sharer on the grounds that non-commercial copying not only isn't a crime, but that it's a common social practice that should not therefore to be criminalised. This stance on the part of the Spanish legal authorities was underlined at the end of 1997 when what amounts to their chief copyright cop said that not everything which is technically illegal is a crime, including non-commercial copying via the Internet or any other means, so they have no intention of pursuing anyone who isn't involved in commercial piracy.

The effect of the above has been to leave civil litigation as the only route open to representative bodies of copyright owners, but their efforts are severely hampered by the fact that ISPs refuse to disclose the identities of the people behind specific IP addresses on the grounds that Spanish law (which is based on EU data protection directives) only requires them to do so as part of a criminal investigation or where matters of public safety or national security are concerned. This eventually ended up at the European Court Of Justice subsequent to a request for a definitive ruling from the Spanish courts, and the ECJ found in favour of the ISP (Telefonica), thereby effectively making civil litigation against Internet file sharers almost impossible.

Or someone steals your iPod. How many iPod's get stolen every year? You can get your bottom dollar that this is a none zero number. Someone willing to steal a iPod is likely to have no compunctions about sharing the songs they find on them with others.

Seriously, you're not expecting the iTunes police to come crashing through the window with guns blazing are you?

As a member of the iTunes Police, I take strong exception to this. Firearms safety has always been a core tenet of iTP training. An iTP officer will only open fire if a copyright violation is in progress, or the officer has reasonable belief that lethal force is the only way to prevent a copyright violation.

iTunes Police would never "come crashing through a window with guns blazing". The very thought of it!

What if the disk also contained word processed documents? Or a backup of your emails? Or you lost your MP3 player and it had your calendar and address book on? Or even your mobile phone with its list of phone numbers? We put lots of personal data on devices that can be lost, some of which is worse from an identity standpoint than an email address.

Besides, I'd expect most people who pick up a disk and don't hand it in to the police are likely to either a) nuke it and use it or b) look for bank details and other things they can sell, rather than music that they need to use their own bandwidth to share for no profit.

Alternatively, you can buy music in small stores, in cash. In that case, it's better to wear sunglasses and a hat. You wouldn't want anyone to discover you're one of those people who actually are paying clients of the music industry.

I know many people incapable of getting music from a CD to a mp3 player but able to transfer from the web to the player.

They must be pretty dumb then. Provided iTunes is running, it starts ripping a CD into the library as soon as a CD is inserted. And as soon as the iPod is connected, the files will get transfered to it. No keyboard or mouse interaction needed.

(These two actions can be disabled with preferences, but I believe that is the default behaviour.)

Just so long as the music industry doesn't come back in 10 years with new lawsuits targeting little-old-lady-X because 10 mil. people somehow ended up with 'pirated' copies of music with her name in it.

Since this watermark must be fairly easy to modify, I can't really see how useful it would be in tracking piracy. It could probably have some uses for marketing research. Though, honestly, I can't think of any myself...

I've bought a few songs and checked them. My personal information is only on the itunes files. I converted the m4a files to mp3's using itune's built in file converter and I do not see any of my personal information in them, at least in plain text.

A big part of the problem is that you are not getting the product you ordered. You are getting a product that has been altered in a significant way.

What you ordered was a music file at higher quality than Apple's standard fare without any DRM, paying a premium for it. That's exactly what Apple gave you. Having you name on the file does not degrade the quality or prevent it from playing on your Zune or HTPC.

By the way, I'm pretty sure this name tagging is covered somewhere in the iTMS terms of usage. So yea

I suppose it's pertinent again and all, but seriously, I already know this guys, why are we pretending like this is new?

On some level, I'm not sure why i care if it's repeat news. I mean really, repeat it all you want i guess, my life still goes on, but i dunno, journalistic integrity and all that, i feel like we should at least mention that this is a complete copy of an older story....-Taylor

This came up when they introduced iTunes plus ages ago. It's been discussed back then. Yes, the info is there. You can simply look it up, no problem. Your ID3-Tag-Editor might not be able to chanxge it since we're not talking MP3 here. That's it.

Just use a different editor, clean out the information and start the copyrightinfringement-frenzy you seem to have been waiting for for so long. Oh no, you already do that, I guess.

Or, if you don't like finding an editor that can delete the info, just go to a record store and steal the CD.

So... if I keep the music I purchased for private use private, I have no privacy violation? Right?

Also, despite the summary's between the lines implication that Apple is hiding the info from ID3 tag editors, the audio files are MPEG4. This means they don't contain ID3 tags. Since MPEG4 is based on QuickTime, a QuickTime atom editor will happily show you the tags and let you remove them.

You could also have guessed the purchaser info was in these files based on the fact that iTunes shows it to you if you get info on a song.

I don't see a problem with this. Apple is providing a file without DRM, and you can then load it on any of your personal devices. Heck, you could even share it with a friend.

But, it might make you a little more careful NOT to put music files you purchase from Apple on a P2P network. Sheesh. It might add a little value to those files you downloaded at a buck a piece. It'll be worth it to you to keep those files safe.

And why not? People should be safeguarding their personal data.

And think about it.. if your iPod were stolen, and all of your files had an email address on it. It could help with the recovery of stolen property, hm?

Way to sensationalize something which has been known for years. Everything that is purchased on iTunes is stamped with user account and a unique transaction ID. Apps, videos, movies, rentals, etc.

It doesn't bother me because I don't share my music on p2p networks and I'm not paranoid like some people. I dislike DRM because I want to easily play my music on whatever device I want, not because of some ideological drive to stick it to THE MAN.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this issue come up back when Apple first released DRM-Free songs?

To add to that, the post is misleading, it's not actually hidden unless you are a complete and utter tool. In the info window of iTunes, it clearly shows the information they have "hidden" in the file...